On Ballmer and Media Centres, BT’s Broadband Voice and how sight kicked off evolution’s Big Bang
This week’s Science and Technology pages are online: I’ve written on the tension between our hi-fi systems and the ones Microsoft wants us to use, Michael Pollitt on how BT is using broadband phone calls as a weapon against cable companies, and in science Andrew Parker explains how sight kicked off the Cambrian ‘explosion’ 530 million years ago.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- D'oh! Bill Gates gets 4 million spams per year, not day, says Ballmer (4 December 2004; score: 72.72%)
- What's a guy gotta do to get a little Scoblejuice around here? (5 October 2004; score: 50.36%)
- Dialup is a pain (5 July 2006; score: 50.14%)
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October 13th, 2004 at 12:49 pm
I read the article about the concept of a “PC under the telly” with interest. Myself and many of my friends have at one point or another tried this concept of having a “media centre” in the living room, powered by a PC, and everyone has confirmed the same two problems:
-The fan is too bloody noisy.
- it looks crap, doesn’t fit under the telly and you still need to use the mouse and keyboard.
Make me a “media centre” PC that:
- is the same form factor as the likes of a stereo component, or SKY+’s PVR or whatever
- is silver like my TV and stereo gear
- can be entirely menu driven from a universal remote control, or has some control device no bigger than a normal remote control and that I can control everything wirelessly without having to get up from the sofa.
- outputs directly in S-Video, Scart and component video.
- connects to the internet using wireless broadband.
- is either completely silent or has a fan that’s no louder than Sky+’s fan.
….and I might be interested.
October 13th, 2004 at 3:48 pm
In our household we have been running a Linux-based “myth machine” now for around 8 months. Take a look at http://www.mythtv.org for details. The fan noise is annoying, but the computer switches off when not in use. On myth we can play all our CDs, view photos, record from TV and watch DVDs - all with one remote (well, one remote after you’ve switched on the telly and the sound system anyway). When people come round to our house they really, really want one for themselves, but its still in beta and to make one for others would mean distressed phone calls every time the thing crashes (not uncommon, but getting better).
As I understand it, the race is on to get commercial myth machines out on the market before July 2005, the US deadline for manufacturing DRM-free TV cards that ignore broadcast flags. I don’t know whether these cards are manufactured elsewhere in the world. For more on this story see slashdot http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/26/1737231 and the EFF’s site http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/